


The Gleam in your Eyes

by halahan



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Coming of Age, Dragons, Dreamscapes, Dreamsharing, M/M, Magic, One Shot, beta'd by google docs' suggestions, fairy tale like writing, inspired by the sleeping beauty, kind of, no one dies but almost, not written in the author's best headspace, so no beta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:47:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22899007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halahan/pseuds/halahan
Summary: Prince Yeonjun is cursed never to leave the castle, and never has he wanted to until he sees Soobin outside his window.
Relationships: Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 16
Kudos: 136





	The Gleam in your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> first txt fic i post, yay!!  
> i started writing this [on twitter](https://twitter.com/pyrojun/status/1230828020300156931?s=20) after seeing the behind photos of magic island mv but decided i liked it too much to leave it there, so if you came from there, thank you for sticking with me! and if you didn't come from there, check out my [account](http://twitter.com/pyrojun)!! i write aus and cry about yeonbin :D  
> anyway, enjoy!

Once upon a time there was a boy named Yeonjun. Yeonjun was a prince, cursed at birth to die if he ever left the castle walls by a jealous witch, so Yeonjun never stepped foot outside.

However, from his window he could see the extents of his father’s kingdom, but never can he even walk on his balcony. Prince Yeonjun spends his youngest years watching the fields, watching them turn from the summery green to the beautiful spring flowers' purple, to brown in the autumn and get covered in white snow in winter, this all year, every year for thirteen years.

Yeonjun grows to become a very smart and creative prince, but also a prince bored out of his mind and to all the castle's workers great dismay, a very disobedient prince. The only rule he has never broken is to go outside.

Comes a day where he almost does, when he spots someone on his balcony.

The boy standing on the stone pavement is about his age, he guesses, only telling by his height and build as the boy's back is turned to him. The stranger is leaning forward, his elbows resting on the balcony's railing. Yeonjun can't join him, and the glass is too thick for him to call the boy without someone inside hearing too. Yeonjun can only watch, confused but somewhat mesmerized as the boy simply observes the landscape, his dark hair locks flowing lightly in the wind. he's wearing very modest but elegant clothing, if anything only a little dirty at the bottom of his pant legs.

But the intruder doesn't stay like this forever and after some time observing – for him, the lands and for Yeonjun, him – he turns around, his eyes finding Yeonjun's, attracted to them like a magnet. They stare at each other for a moment, before the boy's chubby cheeks turn beat red and he jumps.

Yeonjun gasps, as the boy literally _jumps off_ the balcony outside Yeonjun's window. A few seconds later Yeonjun sees a shadow flying away, a shadow with wide wings and a tail. A _dragon_.

  
  


After this, Yeonjun waits every day at his window. He waits for the boy, waits to see his long figure outside the window, waits to see his dark hair, waits and waits and thinks about him, too. He thinks about him a lot, the only stranger he's ever seen. He thinks about the boy’s round face and his even rounder eyes, big as coins with surprise when he had been caught, but their color so rich with everything Yeonjun yearns for: excitement, marvel, wonder, adventure, forbidden discoveries.

He wants to ask the boy about the outside world, wants to ask about where his father’s kingdom's limits lie, wants to ask about the dragon, wants to ask about what the sea looks like. He wants the boy to answer every question that he ever has had and hadn't gotten any answer.

In the castle, everyone always ignores his questions. "You don't need to know anything about the outside since you're never going to leave this castle," they say. Yeonjun hates it, and now that he has caught the slightest chance to finally get answers, he cannot stop thinking about it.

  
  


Yeonjun thinks about the boy so much that one night, when he has turned fourteen already, he sees him in a dream. The prince’s heart starts beating so fast at the sight of the dark hair and long legs.

"Oi!" He calls in the dream's darkness.

The boy turns around.

Yeonjun admits it has been a while since he has seen the boy, he had almost forgotten his face, but now that he sees it again, he is sure the stranger has changed since the last time. But people in your dreams are memories, _so w_ _hy_ _does_ _he look different_ , Yeonjun wonders.

"Oi!" Yeonjun calls again, running towards the boy faster than he has ever ran in the castle's corridors. The boy doesn't move, neither towards Yeonjun nor away from him, he simply stays put. Yeonjun stops running a few feet away from him.

  
  


"Hello," the boy replies softly. His voice is deep, but the dimples that appear when he smiles are deeper. Now Yeonjun knows he wouldn't be able to make that smile up, nor does he remember it. This can't be a simple dream.

The prince knows about magic and what it can do, even if it has been forbidden in the kingdom after what the witch had done to Yeonjun, but he knows this could be the doing of magic.

"My name is Yeonjun," he introduces himself, bowing as he's been taught to do.

The boy chuckles. "I'm Soobin," he bows quickly, clearly not used to it but returning Yeonjun's polite gesture, "it's nice to meet you again."

Yeonjun's mouth drops open. "So this _is_ real? It’s not a dream?"

Soobin shrugs, "just because it is a dream it does not make it any less real."

  
  


For the first time in what feels like forever to him, Yeonjun discovers a new place: his own mind. Alongside Soobin, he explores his dreamscape, a world created of paper words from the book the prince has read and of his fantasies of what the outside looks like.

As they explore further and further, Yeonjun's dreamworld changes with the corrections Soobin gives it.

"These flowers are usually blue!" and the field’s hue turns colder under the boys’ bare feet.

"Bunnies are a little smaller,” and the animal shrinks in Soobin’s arms with a surprised noise, “yes, like that!”

"This tree's roots run so deep in the earth it is said they hug its core," and they tumble over with the shaking the roots growing cause. They laugh, and continue their journey.

  
  


Yeonjun's sleeping time gets longer and longer, and even if Soobin always stays the same amount of time, Yeonjun waits for him in his sleep, plucking a flower's petals or petting a bunny – Soobin had told him their fur was even softer, softer than his hair, but Yeonjun wasn’t able to recreate it as he'd never experienced it close enough, so he settled for Soobin's hair's softness.

Yeonjun grows fond of Soobin, of the shy boy that admits to be younger than him and whines when Yeonjun claims he has to start calling him hyung, of the boy that treats him like another boy instead of a cursed prince, of the boy whose eyes shine when he speaks of the world, of the boy who always smiles brighter than the sun ever could.

Yeonjun also grows to turn fifteen. It's his last year of freedom, because when he turns sixteen he will start learning to be a king with his father.

  
  


Yeonjun asks a new question one day. "What about you?"

Yeonjun has told Soobin everything about the life in the castle, he knows it so well he was able to remake it fully in his dreamscape.

Soobin frowns, a rare sight.

"What's it like where you're from? You never said."

"Because there isn't much to say," he mumbles as his head dips.

"Surely there has to be!"

"I said there is nothing."

Soobin looked angry, Yeonjun had never seen him like this, and they part ways earlier than other nights.

  
  


For a week, Soobin doesn't show up, and nor does Yeonjun’s dreamworld.

Yeonjun is afraid he's done something terrible and is now losing precious time with his only friend.

  
  


But Soobin and the dreamscape finally appear instead of a seventh dreamless night, Yeonjun beams and jumps to his neck, tears in his eyes. He starts apologizing but Soobin cuts him with his own apology.

"I should have not been so rude, forgive me hyung. I just don’t really like talking about my home, as it is not as wonderful as the places you've seen."

Yeonjun doesn't understand, but he nods and they continue on.

  
  


Another day, Yeonjun asks about their meeting.

"Your balcony is the best viewpoint of the kingdom," Soobin explains, "I was simply taking advantage of what I thought was an abandoned sightseeing spot. Your window is always closed."

So Yeonjun tells him about his condition.

Soobin looks aggravated by what he hears, but if he knows something he doesn't speak it, and Yeonjun doesn't push this time, instead he asks about the dragon.

Dragons are more common where Soobin comes from, so he tells Yeonjun a lot about them too.

The sensitive subjects now seem to the teenagers water under the bridge.

Nights and nights pass by the boys playing around, Yeonjun's dreamland doesn't expand but his heart does, with every smile that Soobin gives him his heart gets bigger and beats faster.

  
  


On Yeonjun's last night as a fifteen year old, he tells Soobin about his fears. When the sun comes up, when he'll officially become king-to-be, he will be forbidden to dream, as he has to pledge to revoke all the magic that surrounds boys his age. He's afraid of losing Soobin.

"Would you come?"

Soobin looks at him, questioning.

"To my window, like you did moons ago, would you come again?"

The boy drops his head, fidgeting, but he smiles at Yeonjun and lies for the first time. "I will."

Yeonjun, oblivious to the laws of the world, smiles back. "I'll wait for you."

  
  


Prince Yeonjun cries after the first day of lessons, not because his father has been hard on him, not because he had to eat dinner with all the boring lords and drink their disgusting wine, but because he has spent hours face against the glass in his room and no one showed up on the other side.

For ten days Prince Yeonjun worries and for ten nights, Prince Yeonjun cries. His tears dry out and his worries get pushed out of his mind by battle strategies and diplomacy rules, but his heart never aches any less than the first night.

Prince Yeonjun has no idea as to what is stopping his friend to make good on his promise. On sleepless nights he wonders whether some terrible thing happened to Soobin, if the boy forgot about him, or if he was actually never real.

You never realize how deeply you had gotten attached to someone until you seem to have lost them.

  
  


For months, Prince Yeonjun is left without a friend. One day, Prince Yeonjun is left without a mother, taken by the illness that had started growing in her hidden from Yeonjun’s eyes, the illness that made her scream when he was busy dreaming.

Yeonjun feels all alone. He feels abandoned and no one moves a finger to change it.

  
  


All the prince had was a mother, a friend, and a dreamland. Gone was the first and with the second gone, gone was the latter.

Yeonjun had never before thought of running away, as running away meant losing everything. But now that he had nothing, he had nothing to lose.

  
  


A morning of spring, Yeonjun locks his doors and runs away.

The prince abandons that title inside, where he had forever been locked, and steps on his balcony as _just_ Yeonjun.

The first breath of fresh air is nothing close to what he ever imagined, it fills his lungs with all sorts of smells and feelings. When he takes a second breath, his hands touch the stone, where he had first seen Soobin, where Soobin had jumped off of it.

“ _It is a matter kind of complicated… Dragons are wild beasts, but they are born of pure magic and have a bright mind, one that works closely to a human’s. If they hear the calling of that very magic that they are born out of, they will respond instantly. Each magic user has a particular tone of magic, and each dragon responds to a different tone. Some users are unable to call dragons, and some dragons can never hear a call.”_

“ _Do I have the ability to call?”_

“ _I think you do, hyung, or we would not be here.”_

Yeonjun takes a third breath, climbing the railing, calls and, just like the boy that had once been a stranger, lets himself fall. The balcony is high, but the fall is fast, and the ground gets incredibly close before a shadow moves just under Yeonjun and suddenly he hits scales, gripping onto them instinctively.

Runaway prince Yeonjun flies on a dragon’s back, and no one knows it. He has no idea where he is flying to, but he doesn’t ask the dragon, as he just feels like he can trust him. There is a familiarity to the creature, one that Yeonjun can’t exactly pinpoint.

This is where we have to remember the curse.

  
  


The witch that cursed Yeonjun was once a good witch. She was a good woman and lived in the kingdom, guiding it in magic use and healing many illnesses. She grew up in the house next to Yeonjun’s mother, whom she was very fond of. So fond that when that woman who was not a mother yet chose to marry the man that was not a king yet, she grew terribly angry and her mind filled with jealousy. When that woman announced that she was having a baby boy, the witch fell in a dark rage, and cursed the unborn child.

“ _Your infant shall grow to be beautiful, like a bird in a cage. If it ever got to leave that very cage, it would be unable to fly, and would crash to the ground, meeting the end its life.”_

The now mother and queen cried, the now king and father shouted, and the citizens chased away all those who had use of magic. The witch disappeared, knowing she could never return. The last trace of her was her dark cursed coursing in Yeonjun’s blood, still to the day of the events we are witnessing.

  
  


Now that we have covered this, we can go back to our prince.

Our cursed prince falls, his eyes suddenly closing and his grip on the dragon loosening. He falls, his limp body drawing closer and closer to the ground at increasing speed.

Yeonjun is unconscious, and unaware of what is happening to his body. One moment he was flying away, tears rolling out of his eyes to join the sparse clouds of the evening sky, and the other his mind was floating elsewhere, detached. He feels the shock of hitting the earth, but it holds no pain. He doesn’t know whether it’s because the curse has taken him already or if his fall has been slowed down somehow. But in his state, Yeonjun doesn’t care.

Yeonjun feels strangely at peace, like he’s floating on a salt lake, his body-less being light and calm. It’s pitch around him but the darkness doesn’t bother him, he basks in it like in a dreamless sleep.

Until the darkness fades, the morning-like light invading his sight and something resembling a body comes back to the prince. He doesn’t recognize the landscape around him, but he somehow still reckons it’s his dreamland. He’s lying down in a field, violet flowers everywhere, their abundance creating a comfortable mattress under his body.

If Yeonjun had been in a state closer to his usual one he might have stood up, and tried to understand what was happening to him, but instead he stays there, simply laying. He looks at the sky, the only feature that never changes wherever you are in this world, he feels the grass under his fingers and it feels so real even if he doesn’t remember having touched any before. Maybe his actual body is laying in a field of grass, or he died and heaven has provided him with every piece of information he had not been allowed access to.

Yeonjun lays for a moment, he has no idea how short or how long of a moment, but at some point the quiet is slightly disturbed.

There’s a voice, he is sure of it. A voice calling, too far to be heard clearly but getting closer by the second. Then, Yeonjun can make out a word, or should he say a name. His own, he believes, but it’s all very blurry in his mind for the moment.

“Yeonjun!” he finally hears.

The voice is filled with emotions the prince has no motivation to decipher, and it’s accompanied by a shadow now. A body drops at his side, and Yeonjun can’t focus on them but he can feel its warmth, making him realize how cold he actually is. That’s new, for him, coldness.

“Yeonjun hyung,” the voice calls again. It sounds so broken and wets his cheeks.

_Are those tears? Whose: his or mine?_

Yeonjun’s body is lifted, changing his line of sight from a sky framed with purple flowers to a field filled with them until the horizon where the sun burns pink.

In a speck of clarity, Yeonjun realizes the blurriness comes from two things: his constant back and forth between reality and his mind, pulling him both ways, and tears. His eyes are full of them, however they never drop. Which means the ones he felt earlier are Soobin’s.

_Soobin?_

“Soobin?” he says, weakly.

“Hyung let me pull you into the dream,” the boy whispers, voice shaky. “Please, hyung.”

Yeonjun understands, so Yeonjun gives in and opens his eyes, back fully into his dreamscape. This time he can see Soobin clearly above him.

The prince smiles. The boy doesn’t. The prince stops smiling.

There are many things Yeonjun feels like he needs or should ask but the only one that comes is “Why did you not come? You said you would, but you never did.”

Soobin cries again, gripping Yeonjun’s body tightly. He’s shaking and Yeonjun doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t ask since he hasn’t gotten any answers yet, just mumbling apologies again and again, the words pushing through his trembling lips a dozen times.

The prince’s hand comes up to cup Soobin’s cheek, stroking it lightly, stopping the salted droplets in their fall. “Soobin, why didn’t you?”

“I– I was not allowed.”

“Who forbid you?”

“My mother,” he breathes, “she forbid me from ever coming back to this kingdom again because she feared for my safety after I let a human see my dragon form, and… and because she is the one that got chased away from it for doing this to you. It was all her fault then and it is all mine now.”

Yeonjun shushes him soothingly, pulling their foreheads against one another. “None of it is your fault, Soobin. I made the choice on my own.” He pauses as Soobin looks at his eyes, finally. “And I do not regret it as I got to see you again.” He smiles. “I missed you.”

They kiss. The prince doesn’t know who kissed first, he simply knows that whoever it was, the other kissed back. It’s short and tastes of bitter tears, but it makes something inside Yeonjun bloom.

He’s warm again. He feels stronger. He feels alive. Yeonjun kisses Soobin more fervently, until they’re both left breathless.

Soobin looks at the prince with wide eyes and stutters, left confused by the color that gained Yeonjun’s features again. Somehow, Yeonjun has the answer this time.

“Your mother was right,” he says, “I fell, and my life ended. But a curse bound to a broken heart was fixed by a heart that bloomed again, and I’m ready to start a new life.”

And this time, Soobin smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> [come yell at me on twt](http://twitter.com/pyrojun)


End file.
